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03/25/2011

Sweating and dizzy from stuffing numerous baggies with acorns, I looked around to discover that Matthew had disappeared. I called. He didn’t answer. Thinking that he probably had gone back to the house, I wandered up that way. At the palatial front door, I pulled on the door handle and walked right in, coming face-to-face with a tall, sparkly-eyed young woman in her thirties who turned out to be a poet in the Ole Miss graduate program. I asked her if she had seen my nephew; she hadn’t. Soon we struck up a conversation. I revealed to her my mission, which delighted her to no end. She started writing down names of garden consultants and natural historians associated with Rowan Oak who knew infinitely more about the trees than she did. And as she was writing, I happened to mention our tire plight. She didn’t hesitate and got right on her cell phone and called up her boyfriend, who, she then informed me, was coming right over to fix it himself. And right at that moment, Matthew entered the house holding a light-green, softball-sized version of a human brain.

The Osage orange is one of nature’s most bizarre products. The heavy, waxy fruit is full of milky sacs; its only use today is as an insect repellent, but back in 1934, President Roosevelt used the tree almost exclusively in his “Great Plains Shelterbelt” WPA project to help prevent soil erosion after the Dustbowl, because the hearty trees offer an excellent windbreak. And because of their thorns, Texas ranchers used them along their property lines to keep cattle penned in before the advent of barbed wire. Indians liked to make bows and clubs out of the sturdy, elastic wood.

Holding the Osage orange in his hand as if it were Faulkner’s pickled brain, Matthew and I took a house tour.

03/10/2011

Around the corner on the side street next to the house, we found a half-dozen elderly pecan trees dating back a hundred years. The houses along that street matched the trees themselves, as both were unkempt-looking, with broken branches and missing roof tiles, excoriated bark and moss-covered siding, and zillions of thumb-shaped pecans and small playthings scattered in the yards. We filled our baggies in no time, and were paid no never mind by the cars that drove by.

Back at the Morris house, I was hoping to find the elm tree that Willie and his ten-year-old friends had sat up in for hours in a prank gone awry as described in Good Ole Boy, but there was no elm tree back there. I did, however, find an old locust tree on its last legs. Among the rusty cans, bottles, and used condoms in that alleyway, I was delighted to discover a handful of seedpods that the squirrels had overlooked. It was a bonus round, and with the sun beginning to set, I felt lucky.

03/01/2011

The leaves of the Bodhi are a wondrous shape. The round broadleaf describes an almost perfect circle, with the midrib extending way down into a long thin lobe, forming a tail like a stingray. The leaves, I was told, are suggestive of the Buddha’s ears. In Western culture, small, lobe-less ears close to the head are considered beautiful, but in Oriental cultures, large, pendulous earlobes are admired; the bigger the ear, the more wisdom and compassion the person is reputed to possess. I love how cultures contrast; what I don’t love is being from the culture that admires beauty above wisdom. Nonetheless, just to look at the leaf one can divine something special about the tree from whence it comes.

02/22/2011

There are fouls in sports that connote malicious, mean-spirited, taking-it-all-too-personally intent. In baseball it’s the beanball. In boxing it’s the low blow. In soccer it’s the head butt (think Zidane in the ‘06 World Cup). Those types of fouls we can chalk up as negative byproducts of the game. But when fouls are committed by fanatics off the field of play against innocent mascots and icons, that’s when we stand as one with the players and the coaches and the referees and throw down our yellow flags and blow our whistles and jump into the mix to stop the madness.

The disgruntled University of Alabama fan who poisoned the landmark live oaks at Toomer's Corner at Auburn University managed to do the exact opposite of what he intended—he brought the fans together as one.

"I've never felt more strongly bound to people in my state than now," said Erin St. John to CNN, who organized the rally to save the Toomer's Corner live oaks.

Trees, like the wind and the moon and the stars unite humanity; they brook no antipathy, no outrage, and no fouls.

That the trees poisoned were live oaks cuts to the quick of Southern psyches. There is no greater symbol of the lush, delicious, intoxicating life-aroma of the South than the live oak dressed in Spanish Moss (Tillandsia usneodies), shading the byways and bayous. John Muir, whose home in Sacramento I visited for SEEDS – and where I had quite an experience - spent a lifetime among the most sublime of earth's great tree specimens and wrote of the Southern live oaks : "... but never since I was allowed to walk the woods have I found so impressive a company of trees as the Tillandsia-draped oaks of Bonaventure [Cemetery, Savannah, Georgia]"- from his classic, Thousand Mile Walk.

02/18/2011

Arlene Lynes of Read Between the Lynes in Woodstock, IL: “This book is one of a kind; I am spellbound. The unusual nature of the book, the trivia imparted and Horan's style of writing kept me wanting more. This book has it all: nature, literature, travel, history and humor. It hits on all notes! Reminiscent of Sarah Vowell.” from Becky Milner of Vintage Books in Vancouver, WA: “If Bill Bryson wrote a book about America's trees, he would try to write Seeds. This is Richard Horan's paean to American icons-- writers, musicians, statesmen and the trees that were a significant presence in their lives. Horan travelled around the country to visit the homes of Kesey, Twain, Carson, Buck, and so many more. He gathered seeds from the (often) ancient trees: collecting was sometimes secretive, sometimes welcomed, sometimes comical. Having collected the seeds and seedlings, what would he do with them? With a bit of history, a touch of literary critique, some botany, travelogue, and personal revelation, Seeds is a joy.” And from a longer rave from Paul Yamazaki of City Lights: “One of Richard Horan’s abilities is to approach a subject from an angle or point of view that reveals a layer that was not immediately apparent. SEEDS is an unusual amalgamation of stories, and the reader can savor Richard’s ability as both a writer and storyteller.”